The difficulty is not that which would be presented if the white and black races in our country were both of a low and like grade of civilization; for in that case it is probable that both would fall under the control of a government of force, and not one of liberal laws- a government in which the substantial slavery of the whole would abolish the antipathies and antagonisms of individuals in the bonds, if not the sympathies, of one common oppression. From this low estate they would probably struggle upward together, if the means which would improve the condition of either were common to both. It would by no means follow that the races would amalgamate, or even interblend socially.

Fred. Douglass has said that President Lincoln was the only white man with whom he ever associated in this country who did not make him feel that he was colored and a supposed inferior, and that only in England and on the Continent among Caucasians had he been permitted to realize that he was a man and an equal.

What is the lesson to be drawn from this fact? Does it indicate that the soul is not only of no sex, but of no race? and that as the moral and intellectual are developed in all men, the distinctions of color and the prejudices of condition, which serve to keep separate those who ought not physically to unite, disappear in a democracy which is only possible in that highest plane of civilization and refinement of which individuals of different races or of the same race are capable?

We should never forget that while there is a Caucasian race and a Negro race, a Mongolian race, a Malay race, and an Indian race, that there is also a human race.

There is good authority for the doctrine that God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth. It does not follow that individuals of the great subdivisions of the human family should intermarry, any more than that there should be no such thing as choice between individuals of the same race.

However this matter may be, it is likely to settle itself, and, in our country, is settling itself, by developing a more exacting conformity to race affinity in domestic relations, just as marriage becomes a recognized institution, which has only been since slavery was abolished by war. In other words, just in proportion as the colored people have been made free indeed-after the gospel idea of freedom-they have inclined to preserve the purity of their race blood. And so among the white people by whom they are surrounded. The higher the colored man rises in the scale of being, the closer does the Caucasian race adhere to itself; while in those communities where both races are the most advanced in conditions, there is at the same time the most blood and social separation, combined with the most political harmony and legal equality. There seems to be quite as strong an affinity for their own race developed among the colored people, as a result of the improvement in their condition,

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as among the whites. This improvement of both implies purity of race blood, combined with the recognition of legal and political equality.

This is manifest, not in the domestic relations alone, but in almost everything. Probably it would be found quite as difficult to bring the colored people to consent to the substitution of mixed for separate churches and schools in the South, as to reconcile the other race to the change.

Whether this inclination will be permanent or will disappear under the pressure of the increased burden of expense which it imposes as both races approach one common and higher standard, remains to be seen. No such tendency is yet apparent, nor does the improvement of either and the consequent removal of prejudice increase the friction between them.

Whatever tends toward equality and justice of conditions among men, tends to produce social and political peace.

Turbulence is the offspring of ignorance and injustice. Men naturally maintain order for the sake of their own happiness when they are intelligent enough to know their rights and how to do it. Society is a combination to keep the peace.

The "race problem" in our country includes not merely the question, What shall the white man do with the negro? There is another, still more serious: What shall the negro do with the white man?

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The colored people number nearly if not quite nine millions our population. They are possessed with a certain form of independence which is beyond the reach of adverse laws and unkindly surroundings, and which cannot be taken from them without their consent to it —the independence which comes of subjection to fewer wants than press upon the white people who are about them and who compose the balance of the nation. If they get but little, they have the advantage of being able to go without. Their mental, spiritual and physical wants are few, because of their lack of development. If they are ignorant, they are accustomed to the consequences of ignorance; and if they are deprived of their rights, they have the advantage of having been slaves from the beginning.

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But, on the other hand, it does not go so easy with the white race, pose the larger factor of the American people. If the wants of the negro are few, on the contrary, those of the white man are many; and, as in the struggle for life the opportunity to labor and to produce is the opportunity to livefor only by producing something to sell can anyone buy and thus procure the means of satisfying wants-it follows that if the man with few wants can get the work, he has the advantage of the man with many wants, who must suffer in being deprived of his purchasing power.

So it is that already the cheap colored labor of the South is the secret of the distress of the manufacturer and of the wage-working white masses of our people.

In the advocacy of the common-school bill I have for years pointed out the inevitable coming competition between labor cheap because ignorant and labor dear because educated; and that the only remedy is to educate in order that all labor might have wants and thus consume upon itself and at home its increasing production. This is now becoming a recognized fact; and I see that Mr. Powderly vigorously points to this competition as the secret of the distress among the wage-workers of the North and of the great establishments of industry which employ them.

This is so; and presently it will be found that the only tariff which will protect white labor is intelligence for the black.

Pity that we are so slow in learning that justice pays. It is the old story. We are ruined by cheap labor. Compared with the Mongolian and with the negro, the white laborer is an aristocrat reveling in luxuries, with a thousand corresponding wants, to satisfy which he must earn more than the lowly but vigorous competitor by his side.

If now he is to compete for the work from which alone wages, that is to say, purchasing power, can be derived, either his own wages must fall so that his wants must be unsatisfied, which lowers his grade of civilization, or the improvement of the colored man by elevating his condition must compel him to increase his demand for compensation.

Thus it will be seen that whenever two or more different grades of civilization are brought in contact, they are in conflict. They are like bodies of water, which, while apart, may be maintained at different levels, yet when they meet in one common bed they sink and rise through much commotion until they find a common altitude.

Only by pouring in more water, that is to say, more civilization, can the lower level be raised; and by pouring in enough that level may be lifted even to the heavens, from which the waters fall.

What is true in this great industrial conflict is also true in regard to the whole problem of the relations of the races now so inextricably involved in one common fate to be wrought out upon the arena of American history.

In the real and largest sense it is a problem of civilization, in which peculiarities of race are only one, and that by no means the controlling element. Grander and more powerful than all sympathies, antipathies, and distinctions of race, rise the sentiments and impulses of a common humanity.

There is an instinct of brotherhood within us, and it is impossible for the color of the skin, or even the kink of the hair, or the shape of the shin, to eradicate the idea that the Divinity, in whom the soul originates, considers us all about alike, and loves us still.

If we dissect our moral and intellectual anatomy, we find no greater differences than are manifest in the physical structure of the races. We find in no individual of any race, save in monsters (and they are to be found in all races), a function or faculty which is not common to all individuals of every

race.

We find no sentiment or emotion which is not universal; and the differences among men, so far as inherent qualities are concerned, are not of kind, but of degree.

There is nothing which influences or modifies, or which appeals to the nature of one human being which does not influence any other human being. There may be no perceptible effect in one case, when in the other it may be manifest. But it is there, and is no more lost than the tiny force in physical nature which has moved the mountain, although we may not perceive it.

The leading truth, which must be fully comprehended and admitted if we would arrive at a satisfactory solution of this "race problem," as we call it, more properly a problem in civilization, is that of the substantial unity of human nature.

If that unity be established or conceded, it follows that under like conditions the same causes will produce upon that nature the same effects. If this be so, it further follows that if we would reproduce or induce given conditions and results, we must use the means which have produced them in other cases, or discover new means and methods having the same effect. More or less may be necessary, but we may be sure that like will produce like, if there be proper adaptation of the means to the end.

Whatever will not yield to the transforming power of that which is shown to have changed one people from the savage to the civilized state, if that power be properly applied to it, is either more or less than human.

If failure follows, then the fault is not in the means, but in the subject to which they are applied. If we find a class of beings or creatures who do not respond to that which from savages has produced Ethiopians, Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, Germans, Englishmen, and Americans, we may be sure that we are not dealing with members of the human race. It does not follow that everything which can stand upright, and which goes upon two legs, is human. But the conceded classification of the negro among human beings is an admission that he is subject to the same influences, is capable of the same transformation under the pressure of the same means and surroundings which have been witnessed in other human beings, in kind, if not in degree. That is to say, the same means which have improved the conditions of other branches of the human family will improve that of the negro, and must be employed to that end if we would better his condition here.

But now once more arises the question: What really is the problem which we desire to solve? Is the problem simply how to improve the negro and his condition, or does it also include the rest of us in its scope? If it includes all, then we are met by the inquiry, Is that which improves the condition of the negro best for the whole country?

In answering this question we can deal only with the possible. We must -assume that the deportation of our colored brethren is not conceivable; because, although a few might be transported to Africa or scattered elsewhere,

yet reproduction will increase their numbers in spite of such trifling methods, and our only way to be rid of their presence in the country is to kill them — which would be difficult, for many of them already have guns. If they are to remain here, and are not to be remanded to slavery, and are not to continue to be half slave and half free; if we are to be a democracy or a republic, or if under any form of government the negro is to continue to be a component part of the American people; and if it be true that we are to apply to the American people generally hereafter, as heretofore, the means which improve their mental, moral and physical nature, in order to secure their happiness, can it be possible that the negro is to be improved in any other manner, or that his happiness or the general welfare can be secured in any other way, than by treating the negro in all respects as the white man is or ought to be treated?

Can there be two rules of action for the same human race, in the same country, under the same conditions and the same fundamental laws both of nature and of the state? Not so long as the protest of the Jew remains a record of the imperishable nature of man: "Hath not a Jew eyes?

Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?—and if you wrong us shall we not revenge? The villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction."

We may well let Shylock retain his money; nay, we might give him his drop of blood in return for this impassioned synopsis of the philosophy of humanity. It is useless to endeavor to evade responsibility. Cain was his brother's keeper, and his experience ought to instruct us that a breach of trust is not an escape from penalty any more than it is a discharge of duty.

All this leads to the simple conclusion that our hope is in treating the negro as we do the white man, the negro child as we do the white child, and both with justice.

Whatsoever is justice for any is justice for all. Whatever improves the inward or outward condition of any improves the whole. And the general welfare will be produced by a justice which is the highest form of duty, and which, while it can see the right with the glance of an eagle, is yet color-blind.

The truth is that human nature is a ray of light from the great central orb of the Divinity. When God said, "Let there be light," there was light, and everything throughout the universe was adapted to light in the form and the condition in which He made it.

But our race philosophers continually look upon this divine ray through the spectrum. They think there is no light, because of the mystery of refraction. But God did not create the eye to be a spectrum to distort the light; but the eye was made for the light, and the light for the eye, and both in order that the soul might see.